The earthquake hadn't stopped, but it was gradually weakening.

The scarlet clouds in the sky had turned from red to black and begun to press down, heavy and dark. In the gale they dropped muddy yellow rain mixed with grains of ice. The temperature outside had fallen to around zero degrees, and now and then a volcano still erupted in the distance.

The violent storm of rain and hail washed the dust clean out of the air. Far off, the Taihang range came faintly into view.

The Taihang range was now covered with the scars of volcanic eruptions.

Pillars of smoke swayed in the sky with the storm.

They lingered on and on.

Little by little, Shen Cong saw that something was wrong. He realized that he and the Taihang range were slowly moving apart. His Third Eye Radar could barely pick out a bottomless chasm about two kilometers away. It was widening with every tremor, and it stood between him and the Taihang range.

"The plates are fracturing..." Shen Cong remembered at once. Back at the Eastern Theater Command's laboratory, the researchers had predicted this. Activity corrosion could drastically change the crust, they said, and the plates might break apart.

At the time, Shen Cong had asked whether China, too, might be torn apart if the plates fractured.

And what was happening now looked exactly like the aftermath of a plate fracture.

"There's no way to go and scout it for now. The edges of the great fissure keep caving in, and I can't get too close! The wind and rain are too heavy, and there's hail too. This weather is blocking my sight, and the chaotic Activity is cutting off my Activity-wave perception... Right now I'm totally blind. Wait, I have to wait!"

"A plate fracture can't go on forever. Sooner or later it'll stop!"

A day and a night passed.

There were no more big quakes, but the aftershocks never stopped, the weather was foul and the light was dim. It felt like being back in the early days of the apocalypse, when every hour was spent…